Tuesday, October 13, 2015

"Social Network Sites as Social Learning Resources"

So, another reading, another day.  The thing I took away from this reading that we had to do, was the idea of the meaning of "friend". You can have friends on facebook and on myspace (which they talk about in the article), on twitter and tumblr and so many more social networking sites (SNS).  The definition of friend according to dictionary.com is "noun 1: a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard. & 6. a person associated with another as a contact on a social networking website We've never met, but we're Facebook friends.
We, as a SNS generation has made it so that the definition of friend has changed the meaning to something that relates to Social Networking.  It directly relates to someone we could have never met but still connect with on a SNS.  It kinda blows my mind, you know, the idea that the Internet is basically a whole different world but its such a "normal" resource that we use daily... no hourly... whether it be for school, work or for personal pleasure.  I personally can find that I can be a whole new person behind a computer (in a good way because I'm really shy in person) and have these great conversations with people I don't know, but if i was forced to do this in person I might freeze and not be able to go into the kind of depth I would be if I had a computer, phone or tablet in front of me.  
This reading assignment also made me think of how easy it is for people to get bullied.  Its such an awful topic but I remember being in high school getting lectured on how awful cyber bullying is.  It was a new topic to us because we hadn't really used many SNS before but man, it was a scary thought.  They would tell us stories about people who had committed suicide over comments people say on their pictures or profiles and I just wished I could have helped those poor people out.  I cant believe some people can be so cruel.  I have to be honest and say that I never imagined that computer would be such a huge part of learning.  Since Ive gotten into college, all my homework, reading and assignments have been  online, finding new sites to work on and such so much going on.  Since Ive taken my new literacies class, I have learned so many new sites that I can do cool things with.  I have used thimble, blogger, with known, hypothes.is, pixlr, flickr, twitter (in a whole new way with twitter chats) and so many more.  Moral or my post is, the SNS generation has really changed the meaning of friend and the way we are learning. All we have to do is keep an open mind about the Internet because it can be helpful for everyone. (Which I have learned recently too) Also, do not use the Internet for mean or hurtful things because it affects people beyond belief. Lastly, check out everything that can help you become a better student, worker, teacher or person! We can build our name up and there is so many sites out there to help. 

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Confronting the Challenge Reading:

In our reading, "Confronting the Challenge", on page 6 there is a sentence that says "Not every member must contribute, but all must believe they are free to contribute and that what they contribute will be appropriately valued." This part of the reading spoke to me because I cant count the times where I wouldn't contribute anything because I felt like no one would even acknowledge it.   I always think about how there is so many kids out there who don't speak up because they feel that they wont be heard but what if that kid has the answer to world problems like cancer, sicknesses, crazy math problems, who knows! Anyways, I feel it is so important to make everyone feel like their thoughts are welcome because if they're not then we might never have came up with computers or social media which our world revolves around today.  On facebook, your status asks you what you are thinking, on instagram, there's no limit on how much you can write, on twitter... well i'm not sure why there is a limit on how much you can write but you can still tell people what you're thinking! As I've learned in our class, there is so many sites that are out there to help you create anything you need. When I participated in a twitter chat about education technologies, the amount of resources they were talking about was endless.  It is very easy to use these sites to create a learning environment for students and other teachers, whoever the audience may be.   On the other hand, students could be using all these tools to help teachers learn as well. Point is, don't limit yourself and you can accomplish anything!

Commuter Commission Group Project

Hey y'all, check out our group project on connected learning about the Commuter Commission at Southern Conn. State University! #commuterproblems 


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qJgdd48nQ7zuWYFcMGDhREsrngsFkANYkwmukDwmkrg/edit?usp=sharing

Thursday, October 1, 2015

My first twitter chat

So my first twitter chat was interesting.  I was most defiantly a noob. I've never witnessed a twitter chat before, and it was SO fast paced.  I was waiting for 8 pm to show up so I could participate in the #edtechchat. I had trouble figuring out who was the mediator person but once it got going I saw who was posting the questions.  I introduced myself, but no one said hello back to me.  
It was really hard to keep up with all the posts coming in. Other people were talking about a lot of different programs that they use, some of them i recognized because we used them in class, other I had no idea what they were talking about.  And by the time I went to ask what it was, they had already moved on to other questions.  
Some of the programs they talked about was : Google Classroom (which I decided to go follow on google+ for fun) & Professor McVerry was there talking about thimble and withknown and hypothes.is etc:

I wanted to feel apart of the convo so I just added a quick thought:



There really was so many ideas, some of the questions they asked was:


 I was a learner in this chat because I was getting so much information from these other tweeters, I couldn't keep up! I was looking things up (like google classroom which I mentioned before) and I saw other people asking questions and exchanging info so they could talk more about the new technology being talked about.  I noticed a bunch of different types of teachers talking. Art teachers, tech teachers, English and math teachers as well.  It really opened my eyes to how many people use technology in their classrooms for learning.  
Since this was my first chat, I don't have any advice for if anything could have been done better or not.  I plan to keep looking for other chats just to see whats going on in the twitterverse because I never realized how many people used twitter as a resource.  
It was an interesting experience!!